


we're both of us to blame

by nightwideopen



Category: BBC Radio 1 RPF, One Direction (Band)
Genre: Canon Compliant, Confessions, Enemies to Lovers, Eye Trauma, First Kiss, Hurt/Comfort, Insecure Louis, M/M, Miscommunication, No Smut, One Shot
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-02-21
Updated: 2017-02-21
Packaged: 2018-09-26 00:50:43
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,249
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9854666
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nightwideopen/pseuds/nightwideopen
Summary: Louis is trapped in his hall closet with Nick Grimshaw.





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [achapterends](https://archiveofourown.org/users/achapterends/gifts).



> i was watching a documentary on Scientology and suddenly had the idea that i should write a canon compliant one shot where louis and nick realise their feelings for each other while locked in a closet. 
> 
> im not british i dont claim to be, this is not edited, and throughout i switch between the word closet and pantry. just know they're surrounded by shelves of food. 
> 
> this is for jess x
> 
> Title from Fire with Fire by Night Terrors of 1927.

“Hey there, stranger.” 

Louis’ hand jolts across the shelf, knocking over two boxes of tea in his fright. The first one bounces off his outstretched arm, and when he turns back around to check if the second box has fallen, the corner of it hits him directly in the eye.

“ _Fuck_.”

There's a small ruckus behind him as whoever’s just gone and blinded him shuffles forward quickly, worry echoing in their footsteps. They put their hand on Louis’ shoulder, try to turn him around, but Louis resists. He curls in on himself, clutching at his face, wondering how much worse this day can possibly get. 

“Oh my God, are you okay? Did it hit your eye?”

Lo and behold, it’s Nick fucking Grimshaw, unmistakable voice filling the small space. Louis would be able to pick him out of a lineup blindfolded, even if he wasn’t forced to hear said voice on a daily basis, blaring through car speakers because his driver just _loves_ The Breakfast Show. It’s obnoxious, is what it is, and Louis groans at the sound of it, always has and always will. 

Louis shakes his shoulder free from Nick’s freakishly long fingers and turns to face him with one hand pressed to his stinging eye.

“Yeah, it did. Cheers for that.” 

“I didn't even do anything!”

Louis just stares at him, hip cocked. It's hard to come across as intimidating when he's in such pain. He's trying to pretend that the eye under his hand isn't tearing up more with each passing second, but something on his face must give away his silent anguish; Nick looks genuinely sorry. 

“Must you be such a stain on my life, Nicholas?”

“That’s–” Nick flails one of his hands indignantly, expression returning to the usual one of disdain that he wears when Louis is around. “Why do you insist on calling me that? No one else does.”

Louis rolls his eyes, then winces when pain spikes through his cornea. It’s definitely been scratched; his eye won’t stop watering. He’s going to need a glass eye. He’s been blinded forever.

“God, I fucking hate you,” he mumbles, pushing past Nick to get to the door. “I’ll call you whatever I want. Now, if you’d excuse me–”

The doorknob catches. More specifically, it catches on the lock. Because the door is locked. Louis tries the handle again, twists it both ways, pulls on it. He wants to laugh, mostly because _this can’t be happening_. He shoulder checks the door, kicks it, makes an all around fuss about the fact that it just won’t open. Louis is trapped in his hallway closet while a party rages outside. He can still feel the bass pounding in the soles of sneakers, but since the closet is sound-proofed (he doesn’t know why), all he can hear his Nick’s loud breathing.

Louis is trapped in his hall closet with Nick Grimshaw. 

Hand still over his aching eye, he turns to Nick, blood running hot in his veins. “ _You–_ ”

Nick starts walking backwards, but only makes it two steps before his back hits the wobbly shelves. “You can't kill me. Who would look after my dogs? Think about my _dogs_ , Louis.” He's trying to be funny, but his face has actually gone pale. 

“We very well may die in here, anyway,” Louis points out. “No one knows where we are. Could've left, for all they know.”

Nick doesn't look convinced. “I'm sure Harry–”

“Harry's wasted. Properly wasted, last I saw him. He was flirting with my mop. Stood there twirling her hair and all.”

“That– He _didn't._ Have you got pictures?!”

Louis rubs at his eye gingerly, ignoring whatever pretentious thing Nick has to say. The aggressive pain has stopped, but he still can't open his eye. This very well may be the worst party he's ever thrown. He's not even had a drink yet. 

“Of course I've got _pictures–_ I can't believe you've blinded an international pop star, a fashion icon, a _legend_.” Louis makes to reach into his back pocket for his Phone. “Wait ‘til Twitter gets a hold of this–”

“Left it downstairs, didn't you.”

“It appears so.”

Louis resigns then, sighs and clears a place on the closet floor for him to sit, kicking cans of soup and boxes of pasta aside. He could try to play this off, have a laugh at his ridiculous misfortune, but the self pity takes precedence and makes his chest draw up tight. There's something about the defeat of sitting directly on a box of expired cereal that tugs on his heart and makes his other eye water as well. 

“Are you alright?” Nick asks carefully. 

Louis scoffs, really not in the mood for fake niceties. “Oh, fuck off, Grimshaw. We both know you're loving this. _The Tragic Life of Louis Tomlinson: Volume Ten_. Gonna broadcast my misfortunes on national radio tomorrow morning? Might do you some good, get back those listeners you've so gracefully lost.”

He'd much rather fight with Nick than spill his insecurities and pent up frustration.

“Jesus Christ, do you have to be so _awful_ all the time? Not everything revolves around you and your giant ego, did you know that?”

His voice softens, sounding more like he's just given up chasing a child. Fed up, is how Louis would put it. 

“I'm not going to do that, you absolute narcissist. I really _just_ want to know if you're alright. Harry’s said you've been having a hard time lately, that you don't really have anyone to talk to. Is it so hard to believe that I'm trying to, I dunno, help?”

He sits down across from Louis, tucking his big, stupid, long legs up to his chest. Louis’ legs just barely touch the wall opposite him, and if Nick tried to mimic his position, he'd still have to bend his knees. It's an unsettling realisation, how much bigger than him Nick is, mostly because Nick acts so small. He curls up into small spaces, sticks to the background even as he's talking over people. Meanwhile, Louis overcompensates for his height, always making sure to be the biggest and brightest, never going unnoticed. Center of attention , he is. 

“If I'm going to talk to someone it's not going to be England’s biggest gossip. You couldn't keep a secret if your life depended on it.”

The face Nick makes has Louis wanting to disappear into his non perishable food items. It's a look of hurt that can really only come from a place of deep caring. Louis has seen the same expression on almost everyone he knows. He knows he gets petulant, stubborn, that he has little emotional capacity for understanding when someone's trying to be there for him. He's spent most of his life being the one that looks after others, building up his walls so that he could be the strong one that everyone needed. 

But if there's anything this past year has taught him, is that he can't always be that person. Louis needs that person, too, and he can't be it for himself. 

“Sorry,” he says. 

His eye still hurts. 

Nick runs a hand through his hair that’s finally starting to grow back. Louis has been teasing him for months about his stupid bald head, but now he looks almost identical to when Louis first met him all those years ago. He sees Louis looking at him, and just stares back, almost challenging him to say something about his appearance. Louis just averts his eyes, trains his eyes on the box of Ramen beside his knee. He doesn’t say anything about it, so neither does Nick.

“It’s… It's fine,” he eventually says. “That’s just what people do, though, isn’t it? It’s what _I_ do, anyway. I’m only mean to you because I like you.”

Louis lifts his head slowly, squinting at Nick incredulously. He chooses not to think about what Nick’s just told him, and purposely ignores the implication. 

“I call bullshit, Nicholas.”

“I literally have about five nicknames, and you choose to disregard all of them…”

“ _Bullshit_.” 

When he finishes his eye roll, he sees that Nick is looking back at him, eyebrows drawn. It’s disconcerting, Nick’s eyes on him in the cramped space. Louis’ throat tightens and the closet suddenly feels too small, like the walls are closing in on him. 

“Is it really not obvious?”

“You've hated me for years. Pretty sure that's obvious to everyone.”

Nick laughs, the stilted sound bouncing around in Louis’ claustrophobic head. “Not to me,” he says. 

Louis thinks back to the countless Twitter feuds, the endless banter, the death threats his fans send when his name is so much on the tip of Nick’s tongue. Nick has every reason to hate him. Years of teasing and unjustified rude comments aren't something easily brushed away, Louis knows, because Nick has always had a witty comment to fire back. They bring out the worst in each other, even Harry says so. 

“I don't understand.” And Louis isn’t sure that he wants to. “Are you trying to tell me that you _don’t_ hate my guts?”

Nick’s inquisitive look is almost answer enough. “Far from it, love… Are you trying to tell me that you do actually hate _my_ guts?”

“I thought…” Louis doesn’t know what he thought. That they were enemies? Enemies with mutual friends that live in the same neighborhood and go to the same parties? Enemies that bicker constantly and pull each other’s hair and sabotage each other’s lives by locking them in pantries? “Did you trap me in here on purpose?”

“You overestimate the lengths I’d go to to be alone with you,Tommo.” He ponders this for a second, while Louis’ mouth hangs open, hand finally falling from his eye. “Or maybe you don’t– But, sadly, no. I tripped over the door stopper rushing to your aid.”

“Didn’t do much aiding there, did you?”

Nick shakes his head, a smile into the troubled lines of his face. “Not really, no.”

“How could you not hate me?” Louis whispers, the air in the room suddenly heavy again. He means it to sound rhetorical, but his breathy whimper of a question comes out more desperate than anything. He’s been horrible to Nick, for years and years, full of malice and bitterness and sometimes jealousy. But all this time, Nick was only _joking_. He never meant any of the hurtful words he’d thrown at Louis, he just really knows how to get under  Louis’ skin. And Louis isn’t sure if that makes it better or worse. 

He's staring at his knees, so he misses Nick moving to sit next to him, and the gentle touch to the small of his back startles him. 

“Sorry,” Nick amends softly. “Did you really think I hated you all this time?”

Louis wants to kick him away, make a snide comment, throw his defenses back up. All he wanted tonight was to throw a party to celebrate his return to London. What he got instead was three dozen strangers drinking him out of house and home and Nick Grimshaw oh-so-delicately poking at the walls Louis has put up over the years and watching them crumble. So Louis nods, because what else is a man to do when locked in a closet with his sworn enemy except spill his guts?

“I'm so sorry.” It's not what Louis wants to hear at all. “All this time I just wanted to be your _friend_. I've seen you mess about with the lads; harassing Harry, abusing Niall, kicking Liam within an inch of his life. I thought that's how you showed your affection, by being awful. The worse we were to each other I figured, ‘Oh good, we're actually proper mates, now.’ I didn't think–”

“I really am awful.”

“– That you… What?”

“Awful,” Louis reiterates. His chest is tight with the reminder of how terrible he is to the only people that truly care about him. His best friends. “I'm a horrible person. My friends probably secretly hate me. They probably meet up once a week to complain about me and all the shit I put them through.”

Nick starts breathing weird. “Is is because I said– God, Louis, no. They love you so much, you've no idea. They know how you are, they love any attention you give them, don't you see that? Louis, there are thousands of people that would give anything and everything for just an ounce of acknowledgement from you. Surely you're aware of that.”

“Do you really think I'm that big headed?”

“Have you got to turn this into such a pity fest? I'm trying to tell you that I _like_ you, you absolute dickhead.”

Nick Grimshaw is probably the least comforting person on the planet. His hand that was resting on Louis’ back has turned into a fist that's balled up the base of Louis’ t-shirt. The pressure is grounding, in a weird way, but tears still manage to prick the corners of Louis’ eyes. Nick is just as bothered as he is, anxiety rolling off of him and seeping into Louis. It's the only thing that makes Louis realise that Nick isn't fucking with him. Nick is deadly serious and is nervous about putting himself out there to a person that he's just found has really actually hated him rather than had a minor crush on him like he thought. He thought the feeling was _mutual._ Louis really ought to have been blinded, seeing as his eyes haven't done him any good so far. 

Because Louis never hated him, not really. 

“Sorry.” It comes out in a rush of air. He hadn't realised he'd been holding his breath. “I'm so sorry. About everything. I didn't _know_. I–”

“It's okay,” Nick interrupts. His face is fifty shades of pale; Louis is afraid he may vomit. “I didn't tell you. How could you have known?”

“By not being a bloody idiot?”

“You're not an idiot.”

“I am an idiot,” Louis insists.

“No you aren't,” counters Nick. 

“I'm a little bit of an idiot.”

“N–” Nick stops himself. “Fine, you're a little bit of an idiot. But…” He drops his hand, brings it back to himself and folds his hands in his lap. Suddenly aware of their separate spaces again, he looks embarrassed at ever having touched Louis at all. “I just wanted you to know that I don't hate you. I never have. I've fancied you to a disgusting degree for a very long time and Harry can vouch for that. All of my friends can, actually. You obviously don't feel the same and that's fine, but I just thought you should know. Only because this mortal enemies charade is getting old and I really don't want to fight with you anymore. It's not good for me in my old age. Could have a heart attack and die.”

If Louis wasn't crying before, he is now. He tries to sniffle discreetly, but the room is so quiet that the small sound is almost comically loud. 

“Are you–” Nick _does_ sound just on cusp of a heart attack. “Don't be upset, it's _okay_. Shit–”

“But it _isn't,_ ” Louis whines. “I was awful and terrible and mean and, and. How could you _still_ –?”

He tries to hide his face in his knees, but doesn't make it because Nick stops him with one very firm hand on his thigh. 

“Because you're _you_ ,” he says just as firmly. “I fancy the arsehole side of you just as much as the soft side. I like it when you're mean to me because it means you care enough to figure out just the right ways to piss me off. Not many people know exactly what really ticks me off but you've managed to pay enough attention to me to know how to make me want to murder you. But at the same time I've seen how kind you are, how selfless and talented and I get to _appreciate_ that. I know you're not a terrible person, and I hope you know that as well.”

Louis’ heart swells terribly at that and he finds himself hugging Nick without having remembered even thinking about it. His arms are wound tight around Nick’s neck, Nick’s long arms spiraling their way around his waist and he suddenly feels so, so safe. Knowing that Nick cares for him, even after all of the awful things he's said and done, that's got to be one in a million. 

“I'm so sorry.” It isn't enough. His nose resting on Nick’s shoulder, cheeks stained with tears, it isn't enough. 

Nick only has to whisper for Louis to hear him say, “It's okay.” But the tone of his voice is the product heartbreak. 

But what if… 

Louis pulls back from their hug to look at Nick. “What if I–” Louis doesn't know what he's trying to say, what he _would_ say. He only knows that his mind is racing, countless scenarios whizzing behind his eyes. “If I…”

Nick’s mouth falls open just slightly, like he's going to say something. But he doesn't get the chance to. Rather, Louis doesn't give him the chance to. He presses his lips to Nick’s in a moment of desperation because for the first time since he's known Nick, words have failed him. 

And it's _nice_ , is the thing. It's not horrible, or revolting, knowing that he's sat here, in his pantry, kissing Nick Grimshaw of all people. It's not even exciting. Hell, he's kissed Harry with more heat than this, but this is somehow better. Louis doesn't know why. It’s the impromptu mix of chapped lips and day old stubble, unfamiliar territory.

He pulls back, face burning bright red. The dim light that's hanging above them gives illuminates Nick’s face enough for Louis to see that he looks just the same. 

“What if I did that,” Louis supplies.

“I.” Nick’s giant head must be void of a brain. “I wouldn't be opposed to that. Why did–”

Louis shakes his head. Did the heater come on? “I don't know. Better than bickering, though, innit?” To prove his point, he stretches up to kiss him again. 

“Definitely,” Nick agrees. “Much better than bickering.”

“I don't think I ever really hated you. Not even for a second,” Louis admits wistfully. “I made like I did because you were so tall and confident and Harry's new best friend. Then it was just a _thing_ , us fighting. I didn't mean for it to be… what it was. Maybe this really is what I meant all along. Maybe I really am just a stupid teenage boy inside, dunno how to express my feelings and shit. But I suppose that makes two of us, doesn't it.” Also… “Please don’t out to me to all of England.”

“I would never.”

Nick cradles Louis’ face gently in his hands, just looking at him for a moment before pressing their lips together once more. Louis is sure he's going to catch fire with how deep he's blushing. He only gets but a moment to ponder it before the closet door is being wrenched open by someone very loud and very Irish, who lets a deafening amount of music flood into the tiny space. 

Louis and Nick jump apart just as Niall starts shouting, “What is– Woah! Lads! What's going on in here?! Harry! _Harry! You owe me ten quid!_ ”

Louis chucks a can of tomato soup at Niall’s head, hoping the thud is indicative of a concussion. 

**Author's Note:**

> comments and/or kudos are what keep me writing ;D


End file.
